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AMD Ends Up Releasing Catalyst 14.2 Beta For Linux

02-25-2014, 09:10 PM

Phoronix: AMD Ends Up Releasing Catalyst 14.2 Beta For Linux

In a follow-up to this morning's article about AMD Press Talks Up Major Open-Source Linux Driver Features, AMD Global Communications said there would be no Catalyst 14.2 Beta for Linux, but a new driver was in fact released today...

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FWIW, just to say that it's not only Linux driver that is "still" using 13.35 stream....same goes with Wxx drivers....anyway, the Linux driver news are pretty much pathetic...

Disagree.

It show that AMD lack human resources to develop their drivers. And its that way for quite some time. Few months ago, they finally fixed at least some of blockers for Blender OpenCL backends, but stated that further work would not come fast. Now, they did pushed phase 2 of their frame pacing solution, after months of delay. And just now they have released driver with very minor changes to the OGL/DX.

All in the name of pushing Mantle and TrueAudio to the market.

But it have good side. Very good side in deed.

1) Mantle at long last fulfill need of API that let dev talk to the GPU. (DX/OGL only let you pass precompiled shaders, everything else goes to the driver.) That will push OGL to new developments.
2) AMD acknowledged Radeon driver! Next step, would be for AMD to officially recommend it. And that would be it. Full support is one small step away! (But for that Radeon still need more features)
3) Radeon is progressing well, and is unaffected by AMD troubles with Catalyst team.

And its a bit funny to see 50+ posts that complain about that single typo. :P

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Just installed the 14.2 beta drivers. As the article says no significant changes. Ran Unigine Valley benchmark on my system getting 42 fps, which is exactly what I had with 14.1 beta drivers. So no real reason to update, unless you're running Minecraft or X-Plane and affected by whatever bug they've fixed.

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Just installed the 14.2 beta drivers. As the article says no significant changes. Ran Unigine Valley benchmark on my system getting 42 fps, which is exactly what I had with 14.1 beta drivers. So no real reason to update, unless you're running Minecraft or X-Plane and affected by whatever bug they've fixed.

Minecraft is a pretty popular cross platform game. So there might be a few people interested in this update (yes, me included).

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Anyone else thinks AMD is focusing more on the open source driver, and only keeping Catalyst alive until the open source driver catches up?

These kinds of questions always say more about the person asking than anything about AMD.

AMD has never put much into Catalyst on linux, and they're still putting a lot of effort into it for Windows. So i really don't think anything is changing at all on that side. On the OSS driver side, you're just finally seeing years of work starting to really pay off. That's a reflection of what has been going on for a long time, not anything new.

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These kinds of questions always say more about the person asking than anything about AMD.

AMD has never put much into Catalyst on linux, and they're still putting a lot of effort into it for Windows. So i really don't think anything is changing at all on that side. On the OSS driver side, you're just finally seeing years of work starting to really pay off. That's a reflection of what has been going on for a long time, not anything new.

You got it right in all points....at this rate, i bet that sooner or later SteamOS will drop any kind of support/use for Catalyst and will go OSS.